Stubborn Girl
by Sleepandsheeps
Summary: Draco Malfoy had enough. He was done with going behind everyone's backs to see Hermione Granger. He was done with keeping everyone in the dark about them. But when he brought up the topic with Hermione, she didn't take it well. She was a stubborn girl. One shot, EWE.
**Disclaimer: The following is a work of fan fiction based on the popular series Harry Potter created by the wonderful JK Rowling. No offense is intended towards JK Rowling or her work. However, this fan fiction is 100% written by me unless otherwise indicated.**

She was a beauty.

She wasn't always beautiful. He definitely didn't think so in first and second year. But then she punched him in the face and his opinion of her changed. He couldn't say that it was for the better. After all, she was still a mudblood and he was still a pureblood. But she did beat him in everything, showed more compassion than he could ever give, and was courageous as a bloody lioness to stand up to him like that. She wasn't beautiful then. She was worthy. And when his eyes feasted on her during the Yule Ball in fourth year, she became more and more beautiful to him. She still was.

That's why it was hard for him to look at her now and not tell the world she belonged to him. As she walked about the room finding her clothes with nothing but a towel hiding her voluptuous form, he couldn't help but wonder if she knew. Did she know she was beautiful? Did she know his true feelings for her? Did she know he would do anything for her, including beating Weasley to a bloody pulp or disregard centuries' worth of pureblood traditions, if it meant she would stay?

"I'm telling my father," he said.

She stopped what she was doing for a second, gave him a withering look, and returned to her task of finding her knickers.

"Don't ignore me, Hermione." He sat up straighter on the bed. "I'm telling him whether you like it or not."

Despite his request, the woman ignored him anyway and picked up a pair of purple lacy underwear from the floor. She quickly put them on, threw a robe over her bare shoulders, and turned to look at him with eyes that held no mirth.

"You shouldn't do that," said Hermione.

"Why not?" He asked.

"He's going to disown you," she replied without a pause.

He scoffed at the answer.

"It's a chance I have to take. I'm tired of all this." He gestured at the lavish hotel bedroom. "I'm tired of seeing you in secret. Of constantly worrying about what other people think, what they would say, all of it." Then to make his point clearer, he pulled the sheets off his lower half and looked at her in the eye with an eyebrow raised. "I want our relationship to be out in the open."

Hermione held his gaze for a few seconds before her eyes lowered to scan over his body with appreciation.

"You're terribly crass, Draco." She said, averting her eyes. But the hint of a smile on her face told him she thought his crude gesture was funny. "That was completely unnecessary."

When Hermione started putting on her shirt, Draco quickly got up from the bed, picked up his own shirt and pants from the floor, and put them on.

"I think it's time." He said, buttoning his shirt. "It's been two years, Hermione. The world deserves to know that we're going out. Think of the scandal. Think of the aneurysm Skeeter is going to have."

"" _Are_ we going out?" She asked with a raised eyebrow. "And you're not making the prospect any better you know."

"I'm pretty sure we are, yeah."

"We're just sort of fucking each other though." Hermione said.

He stared at her with a deadpanned expression.

"Alright, so we're fucking each other. _A lot_. We're also eating dining out an—"

"Dining in private," Hermione interrupted.

"Dining in, reading long ass books together, and decorating our living spaces and all that relationship jazz everyone seems to love." Draco paused in his tirade. "If that's not going out, then what is?"

Hermione shrugged nonchalantly.

"We're fucking each other so if it comes down to it, it's nothing really." Hermione zipped up her skirt and glanced at him with a look that could kill. The sneer on her face was quite similar to how he looked at her back in first and second year. "You're just a fuck. Don't think you're any more than that."

He could not deny the comment hurt. It did terribly. But they've been through this before. They've thrown crass and crude comments about one's lack of importance in the other's life. And yet there they were two years in and still going at it strong as if all their previous arguments didn't matter. In the grand scheme of things, they didn't.

"Yes, and you're just a dirty girl who likes to be tied up and fucked senseless."

A hint of a smile graced the woman's lips and he couldn't help but laugh at the sight.

"That was one time!" She said indignantly.

"The only time you came five times." He pointed out with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

She rolled her eyes and laughed out loud.

"Well if you're any good, five wouldn't be my highest record." Hermione retorted with a smirk.

It was his turn to roll his eyes, the action exaggerated to the extreme to mock her.

"Well, I have to go now." Hermione slipped on her shoes and flashed Draco a sad smile. "Harry and I are having dinner."

"Hermione," Draco cleared his throat. He knew he was over-doing it. But he had to remind her. "I'll tell my father soon."

Hermione's shoulders slumped and she let out an exasperated sigh.

"That's not the plan, you know."

"Oh do tell me what the plan is Hermione because I don't ever remember discussing a plan."

"The plan was to fuck and not see each other again for the rest of our lives." Hermione replied. Her voice was tinged with a hint of anger. "This was supposed to be a one-time thing."

Draco clenched his jaw, turning away from her to look at the disgustingly purple wall. Honestly, who was in charge of interior decorating? Even his house elf could do better than this.

"Yeah well, it wasn't."

"It should have been."

He looked at her. Despite fixing herself up, she still looked a bit disheveled with that bird nest of hair and the wrinkled clothes. It was nothing a quick spell couldn't fix. But standing there like that with a hint of a hickey on her neck, she looked thoroughly satisfied and he felt proud in the knowledge that it was he who tired her out.

"It never will be." Draco said with finality. "I realize continuing this long after the initial one night stand was not in your grand scheme of the future. But it should be clear to you now, to the both of us actually, that wasn't that bad of a detour. In fact, I reckon it's the best detour we've ever taken."

"Why now?"

"What do you mean?"

"You never really cared before." Hermione shuffled uncomfortably. "Why do you want people to know now? Are you not satisfied with what we have?"

"What do we have, Hermione?" Draco sat down on the edge of the king size bed. "When we see each other at work, we greet each other cordially but never strike a conversation that might be misconstrued as amicable friendship. Why? Because no one knows we're together. Apparently, school rivalry is the new form of identification now so I'm supposed to hate you when all I really want to do is have an actual conversation for once. If someone makes a pass at you in front of me, I can't tell him to back off. I don't know about you but I feel like I'm having a sordid love affair with someone who isn't even married."

Hermione's face showed nothing of her feelings on his rant. If anything, she looked like a woman who grew up with pureblood etiquette teaching instilled in her from an early age. She sort of reminded him of his mother whenever the woman is out in public. There's a hint of haughtiness to Hermione in the way she carried herself, but the eyes he was staring into told him more than what she herself could say.

His announcement of telling his father about them had confused her. She was in turmoil, but he did not understand why. What was it about revealing their relationship did she fear so much? Was the aspect of him being disowned mean that much to her? Did she fear him losing his money? He knew her character well enough to know that his money or the lack of it will never influence her feelings for him. It never did before. But he couldn't help thinking it might be a possibility, no matter how small. Or was it something else? Hermione have spent too much time with him. Her pure Gryffindor sensibilities were no longer showing. He could not read her any more than he could read Snape when he was alive.

"Would you rather I get married?" Hermione asked finally, slightly titling her head to the side as if mocking him.

Yes, his sarcasm has definitely rubbed off on her. She was going to be the bane of his very existence. Why did he think she was going to be the definition of it? He must have been drunk on gillywater when that thought came to mind. There was no way he was in love with this dreadful woman. No way.

"If you marry anyone, I will curse them for all eternity." Draco hissed, scowling.

He wasn't sure if he was angry at her for mentioning it or at himself for letting her think that's even a possibility.

"That's a bit harsh, isn't it?"

"If he dares to take what's mine, then he deserves it."

Hermione laughed.

"Yours?"

"Mine," Draco said without pause.

He patted the bed and gestured for her to sit next to him. Hermione debated it for a moment, wavering between her plans with Harry and his desire to talk to her, and sighed. She took step forward, but instead of sitting on the bed, she walked straight up to him. He parted his legs and she moved in. His arms wrapped around her waist and she in turn put her arms on his shoulders.

"Yes, dearie?" She asked, gently playing with his hair.

"I wasn't joking, Hermione." Draco absentmindedly rubbed the small of her back. He leaned closer to her stomach and closed his eyes. "You're the best detour I've ever taken."

"That's good." She giggled.

"Abundant sarcasm you have," he murmured in his best Yoda voice. "Rubbing off on you, I am."

She laughed again, her whole body shaking with the intensity.

"I knew you would like the movies."

"Did you doubt it?"

"No, but you might have denied liking it and say abhorrent things about it."

"I would never!"

Hermione pulled away a few inches and glared down at him. He raised an eyebrow in challenge.

"Sure, Draco. Whatever makes you sleep at night."

There was a pause in which the two of them just stared at each other. No words were exchanged, but they both knew what each other were thinking. Then breaking the silence, he said:

"I wouldn't mind sleeping with you every night of my life."

"Every night of your life? It sounds like you're proposing."

"What if I am?" Her patting ceased and her body tensed. Sensing this, Draco tightened his grip on her waist and let out a chuckle he didn't really feel. "I was kidding. Merlin, relax." When she loosened up a bit, he sighed and laid his head on her stomach again. It was partly because he couldn't bear to look at her face and partly because he could feel the blush reddening his cheeks. "I'm definitely not proposing. You will know when I do. But… perhaps you can consider going public?"

"No one will like it." She reminded him.

"No one will ever like anything we do."

"What if that someone is your father? Or your mother? They're the ones obsessed with purity of the blood."

"Then they have made their choice, as I have made mine."

"It's a stupid choice."

"The way I see it, it's the only choice."

A pregnant silence fell between them again, growing ever so bigger with the sound of the TV playing in the living room. Although Hermione did not tense under his touch, he could tell she was thinking hard about what he said. In a way, he was grateful. At least she didn't exactly dismiss it like other times before. Her hands had stopped playing with his hair and instead started braiding them. It's been more than six months since his last haircut (at Hermione's insistence) and now his shaggy blonde hair was long enough for extremely short braids. He didn't really mind it. He had gotten used to her mindless braiding. But sometimes, the way Hermione tugged at his hair hurt. He never said anything for fear she would pull his hair off bit by bit or do some wandless magic to make his precious hair disappear forever.

"Okay," she said after half his head was braided. He looked up at her, the strain of the braids making him want to scratch his head like mad, and waited expectantly. She gave him a timid little smile as if she was embarrassed but excited with the idea. "Let's tell people. You tell your parents, I'll tell Harry and Ron. Best we do it before the media gets hold of our pictures."

"What makes you think they don't have any?"

"Oh I'm pretty sure they have a bunch of incriminating pictures, but nothing that can really connect the two of us."

"Skeeter probably has an article ready for publication somewhere in that notepad of hers." They both laughed at the thought. He glanced at the clock at the wall opposite him and noticed Hermione was, once again, late for her date with the pothead. "You better get going. Wouldn't want cuddly Harry Beary to wait, now would you?"

"Stop calling him that," Hermione punched him in the arm. He tried not to wince. "I'm going now. I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow," he confirmed.

Hermione gave him a quick peck on the cheeks, stepped out of his arms, and disapparated on the spot. Draco stared at the empty space for a few seconds before getting up from the bed. He walked over to the armchair where his coat was and fished out a small jewelry box from within the depths of the coat's pocket. He had been carrying the box around for a while now, waiting for the right opportunity to show it to her. But alas, when the moment came, he had backed out. Besides, it didn't seem like she welcomed the idea. They have talked about the aspect before in passing but it was never serious and nothing past the point of agreeing to getting married sometime in the near future. There were no indications if it was to each other or to someone else.

Minutes seemed to pass as Draco stared at the jewelry box. Then, as if struck with a thought, he gingerly opened the box and let out a low chuckle. Hermione would never wear something as gaudy as this, he thought to himself. For inside the box was an eerily luminous gold goblin-made arm cuff. The shape of the arm cuff gave the impression of a sinuous snake twisting and weaving itself onto the wearer's upper arm. It was, according to his parents, a precious Malfoy heirloom. Tradition said that the Malfoy heir had to offer this arm cuff to his intended. If she accepted his marriage proposal, she was to wear the arm cuff until after they married. His father had given it to him after he graduated from Hogwarts and instructed him as such. It was an antiquated tradition, he knew. But Draco had grown up seeing his mother wear the same arm cuff and had imagined his wife would wear the same thing when he found her.

Now, five years later, he had found the girl. Whether or not she wanted to wear the arm cuff was an entirely different matter. After all, she was a bleeding Gryffindor and they are notoriously stubborn.


End file.
